Monday, September 15, 2008

Tyson Hunkers Down

The coach that Duke saw fit to fire (before an investigatory report concluded he had done nothing wrong) was recently honored by the lacrosse community. Mike Pressler has been named head coach of the U.S. National Lacrosse team for 2010. Said the chair of the selection committee, “We were certainly very impressed with Mike’s professionalism and more importantly, his excitement and enthusiasm for the position. He can’t wait to get started and has put a lot of thought into it already.”

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An item from Duke News shows that the University has changed its attitude in at least one respect—and in a commendable fashion—from the lacrosse case. The University-run site highlighted the efforts of Gunther Peck, the Fred W. Shaffer Associate Professor of History and Public Policy Studies, “to make voting more convenient for the Duke community” by helping establish a polling place on campus (as already exists at NCCU). Peck acted after he was “concerned by low student turnout in May’s primary.”

Peck’s efforts deserve the strongest praise. That said, it’s hard not to notice the dramatic change in the University’s approach between 2006 and 2008. In 2006, of course, University security officers suppressed an attempt to register students outside the football stadium. And Group of 88 member Grant Farred denounced the voter registration drive as racist.

Farred, who now teaches at Cornell, didn’t respond to an e-mail asking if he considered Peck’s effort to be racist as well.

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At least Duke was willing to recognize the errors of its ways in this one respect. The true believers among the faculty have shown little willingness to consider any item about the case revealed after Mike Nifong went silent, in early April 2006.

The most recent example: anti-lacrosse extremist Tim Tyson, one of two Duke faculty members who publicly confessed to participating in the March 25, 2006 candelight vigil outside the captains’ house. Tyson held his candle at about the same time that the vigil’s honoree, Crystal Mangum, was videotaped dancing—in a most limber fashion—at the Platinum Pleasures Club.

Tyson was recently interviewed by the WilmingtonStar-News, which asked him if he regretted his inflammatory comments about the lacrosse case. Responded he,

I have lived to regret being understood so selectively. The sentence I said about what we have to remember is the investigation is still underway. I was reminding people that the defense might not be guilty. I think it frustrates my critics greatly. I stand by every word of it. [emphasis added] There was a racial incident in that house that was ugly as hell.

“I think the spirit of the lynch mob lived in that house on Buchanan Street, frankly, and I think that we prefer to think of white supremacists as ignorant, pot-bellied, tobacco-chewing sheriffs and Ku Klux Klan members from Mississippi, but here we have the sons of power and privilege, the wealthy and well-educated among us, who are acting out this history.”

Duke students not talking to Sgt. Mark Gottlieb outside the presence of their attorneys “may be illegal” and constituted a “terrible moral miscalculation.”

“The neighbors who have no ax to grind in this, presumably, seem to confirm the charges of the women that there were a lot of racial insults thrown.” [emphasis added; there was one racial taunt from Kim Roberts, followed by one racial slur from a Duke student]

“I wouldn’t let this team continue to exist until the police get some cooperation from them.”

And what of Tyson’s vaunted “reminding people that the defense might not be guilty,” which he believes “frustrates my critics greatly”? Here’s what he actually said, according to Tyson himself: “It is important for us to remember that an investigation is pending, and the police are the only people qualified to figure out what happened in that house altogether, and we have to support [the police] as they do that dirty job of trying to figure out what kind of ugly things unfolded there.”

That’s the same “police” investigation that among other things: never interviewed the doctor who conducted Mangum’s medical exam . . . ran a rigged lineup that violated the department’s own procedures . . . and produced the Gottlieb memo, the transparently contrived after-the-fact “notes” designed to fill in the many holes in Nifong’s case. That’s the “investigation” that Tyson believed “we have to support.”

This same figure who publicly asserted that a named suspect refusing to talk to a corrupt cop without presence of his lawyer might violate the law(!!) is now lecturing on race relations in Wilmington, invited by the Wilmington district attorney.

25 comments:

af
said...

Time truly does have a way of altering history (and memory).Congratulations to Mike Presslar. He, more than anyone else, was a big loser (in that he lost his job at Duke, but a winner in the way he lived his life as a human and as a coach).I will never cease to be amazed that some people are so "teflon" that their stupidity is rewarded by continual access to corrupting others. Only in Wonderland.

It never ceases to amaze me how these people cling to their beliefs despite overwhelming evidence against them. It is not like they couldn't find actual real examples of the race/class/gender atrocities they wish this case to be. Why hold on to this case? At this point, what do they have to gain? Keep up the relentless pressure until these people are forced to relent.

Revisiting the words and actions of the Gang of 88 as well as their most enthusiastic ally, Timothy Tyson, is a nauseating experience; however, one that must be revisited again and again to remind ourselves and others the damage they do to society.

It's pathetic the way Tyson using religion and spouts religious quotes, phrases, and allusions in almost every aspect of his "work".

Does anyone really see any work in Tyson's perpetual minstrel show?

I don't.

Anyone can take an issue you're passionate about and assign significance to it as well as garner lots of attention just by screaming and whining and embellishing.

When you add emotion to something that is supposed to be scholarship, the emotion eclipses the subject matter.

Tyson is even peddling the faded gospel singer Mary Lou Williams. She took up space over at Duke for years. Singing gospel.

The "course" that will be taught by Tyson is nothing more than an exercise of getting a group of people to show up for a Tavis Smiley throw-down.

Lots of undocumented rhetoric and stale melodrama designed to whip-up people who are constantly looking for something else about which to be whipped-up.

And Tyson delivers.......repeating his little tale as he has for most of his life......each time embellishing just a bit more here and there for effect.

Tyson is a very simple and pathetic man who will not take responsibility for the harm he did to young men at Duke.

Lastly, given the population percentages in this country, I don't think you will--or should!--see a lecture hall full of the faces of people whose numbers represent a fraction of the whole.

Like all race-baiters who feed off this subject, Tyson would like us all to manufacture a society where we simply place people in positions they haven't earned and have no place.

I read the whole interview, and often when one takes quotes out of an interview, one can make a person sound to be worse than might have been said in total context.

However, in THIS situation, the interview in its entirety actually is more arrogant than the quotes used by K.C. might suggest. I would recommend highly that people read the entire thing to get a sense of just what an evil jerk Tyson really is.

Tyson clearly implied guilt in his statements. Furthermore, he made accusations against the players that simply were not true. We did not have "a racial incident in that house that was ugly as hell," period. The players were NOT making racial remarks, and nothing racial was said until Kim Roberts -- who, along with Crystal, already had ripped off the players of a lot of money -- made a racially-charged remark.

The replies were bad, but they came in a heated situation in which both parties were using racial remarks.

The real ugliness at Duke came when the university's administration and a large portion of the faculty worked hand-in-glove with police and the prosecutors to frame innocent people of terrible crimes that never occurred. From what I can tell, very few people at Duke are willing to deal with that truth squarely.

To Tim Tyson, the fact that a student called a black prostitute the "n-word" is a worse crime than having the political apparatus of Durham trying to frame innocent people of non-existent crimes. That gives me the sense of perspective that exists at Duke.

Gunther Peck is married to Faulkner Fox, Lecturing Fellow at Duke. Fox not only attended the candlelight vigil, she organized it. Fox was quoted in the press and, here I'm paraphrasing, said something about the community would not tolerate anyone who "potentially" disrepected women. I don't believe she ever apologized in anyway for organizing the vigil outside a private residence before any facts were even established.

It seems to me that perhaps we should start organizing "candlelight vigils" of our own to be held outside the homes and offices of the various Duke miscreants. Maybe Faulkner Fox might want a few hundred people outside her place screaming, banging pots, making threats, and the like.

In fact, maybe someone can make a false accusation against one of the G88 and then use that accusation to hold demonstrations. If the people protest such actions, tell them that it already has been done at Duke and the university already has approved such action.

Tyson is just a bitter man clinging to race, fabricated injury and his foppish outrage because events in the real world have passed him by. We need to be sensitive to the larger forces which have shaped his bitterness that have left him with no choice but to cling to ways of thinking that allow him comfort even as his race/class/gender/sex fantasy crumbles.There was indeed a racial incident in Durham that was ugly as hell but Tim Tyson was the perpetrator.

...I have lived to regret being understood so selectively. The sentence I said about what we have to remember is the investigation is still underway. I was reminding people that the defense might not be guilty. I think it frustrates my critics greatly. I stand by every word of it. [emphasis added] There was a racial incident in that house that was ugly as hell.::Racial incident!

What is a racial incident, I wondered?

A Google search using the 'Google Define' function reveals ...“A racist incident is any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person.”

And I find the phrase 'racial incident' and the term 'perceived' in many different contexts by the Marxists.

Tyson and his friends across the world are attempting to substitute the word 'incident' with the word 'crime' in the mind's eye of students who read their meanderings.

This man needs to called forth for an accounting of what he is teaching. ::GP

Coach Pressler's appointment as coach of the US 2010 US Men's Lacrosse Team is very exciting. It's wonderful to hear about this man's reemergence in the national lacrosse spotlight after the Duke efforts to crush him.

I am very interested in the change of heart at Duke regarding voting. As I dropped a freshman son off at college this fall, I noticed that registering to vote was literally one of the "stations" in the process of registering for school. Then, the president of the college addressed the issue of student voting in his address to the parents. He made it very clear that it is the right of the kids to vote at school, even though student voting has created some tension between the college and the more conservative local community. On the issue of voting in the local elections, the president advises the kids that, although it is their right to vote in local elections if they wish, they need not feel compelled to do so unless the issue/election has some significance to them. Most reasonable, and a sharp contrast to the completely outrageous Duke approach of 2006.

Grant Farred's assertion that the student voter registration drive at Duke was somehow "racist" and Duke's shutting down of the voter registration efforts remain two of the most extraordinary pieces of the Duke/faculty response.

Indeed, a "racial incident" that was "ugly as hell" did occur in Durham, and it occurred many times. We had black ministers holding services and protests at 610 N. Buchanan St. Black ministers declared from their pulpits that Reade Seligmann and Collin Finnerty were guilty.

Reade Seligmann received a number of death threats from the New Black Panthers. Grant Farred declared that students at Duke who registered to vote were doing so because they were "racists," and students at NCCU demanded that Duke students be charged with crimes even if no crime occurred.

The execrable "wanted" posters were copied using Duke facilities at the John Hope Franklin Center, again for racial and political reasons. The people at Duke were making racial and political statements and making false accusations of crimes. Karla Holloway and Houston Baker were interviewed for the sham known as the Bowen-Chambers Report, and they made racially-inflammatory remarks -- and also lied in the process.

This is a very small list of things that happened at Duke and at Durham. Thus, I can say that Tim Tyson was partially correct. Ugly racial incidents broke out all over the place in Durham, at NCCU, and at Duke. But, Tyson was a ringleader for these evil events.

N&O senior editor Linda Williams---(the same editor who had her hands all over the way the Lacrosse Hoax was covered)---has openly admitted to Gearino that she was, indeed, the one who sent out the biased and bigoted "instructive" email to the entire staff.

Now she continues to descend into outrageous ad hominem with a former colleague on his blog.

Read the Editors' blog at the N&O and also Gearino's blog.

There is a story here and it's too bad the attorneys for Reade, Collin, and David didn't have access to proof of this woman's unprofessionalism earlier.

This will tell the story of the N&O. If they allow someone like this---a senior editor!!!---to remain, they will sink fast.

There is a sign near East campus that does say the group of 88 supports dale jr, it looks like a homemade sign, near the railroad tracks on Swift Avenue. Maybe someone is implying that the group of 88 is supporting dale, meaning they don't even know who is running for president???? or is someone on campus running for an office and is named dale? Don't know what it means, but I did see a sign that does say that.

What happened to the comment thread for the next blog entry: Words to "stand by"?

It pains me to point out the obvious but Tyson said:

She is the mother of young children, "a student at NC Central. Our society has not chosen to support people actively trying to advance themselves and to advance our economy by pursuing an education so that people without means find themselves in desperate...."

Points:1. Can he really believe this drivel?2. What does this say about 'desperate' people who manage to put themselves through school without resorting to prostitution? No one in our society is ever driven to that extreme to come up with tuition money. She gets no moral free ride from me on that account.3. I'm sure our society HAS chosen to support her at least with welfare and probably with tuition loans if not a free ride at school through vocational rehab or some such agency. When (if?) her book comes out I suspect there will be no reference to her ever having paid a dime for her education. It's not consistent with her lifestyle or background to think that she would buy into the notion that she should have to pony up for that sort of activity. (It took me ten years to pay off mine so maybe I’m bitter.)4. Female sex industry workers through the ages and around the world all had mothers and, presumably, "sweethearts" (how quaint). The ones in our society that I've ever met are there by choice because it's an easy way to make a buck.5. Kim and Precious were, by reports, paid the incredible sum of $400 EACH for two hours of merely dancing. It's neither illegal nor intrinsically morally reprehensible if that's as far as it goes. Precious was accustomed to doing A LOT more for A LOT less (or even free if it was good for business). 6. The fact about this case that was immediately most glaringly obvious when it first hit the news in 2006 to me as a former Duke student and jock is that not one of those boys (men?) would have ever been able to look any of the others in the eye if they had even TOUCHED those hookers that night. It may have racist overtones, but to go bottom trolling for sex in front of their fellows would not have been socially acceptable by their group's standards. Interracial friendships and even romances would have been fine- but not that. It was that fact that captivated me from the beginning. Then I was hooked when the school abandoned them- but we all know that story....

Readers of this blog might be interested in the column "Mistress of Disaster- Jamie Gorlick" at American Thinker: http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/09/mistress_of_disaster_jamie_gor.html . Aside from being on the wrong side in the Duke Lacrosse case, she was, while at Justice, responsible for the pre-9-11 wall between the FBI and CIA that prevented sharing intelligence. She went on to be vice chairman (on what credentials other than politics?) of Fannie Mae where she was paid millions while it rotted on the inside and covered that up with phony accounting. Don't look to the national press to report that both Fannie and Freddie were shot through with Democrats and protected themselves from regulation through copious lobbying and campaign contributions.

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I am from Higgins Beach, in Scarborough, Maine, six miles south of Portland. After spending five years as track announcer at Scarborough Downs, I left to study fulltime in graduate school, where my advisor was Akira Iriye. I have a B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard, and an M.A. from the University of Chicago. At Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, I teach classes in 20th century US political, constitutional, and diplomatic history; in 2007-8, I was Fulbright Distinguished Chair for the Humanities at Tel Aviv University.

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